Muriel Rukeyser

American poet Muriel Rukeyser was born in New York City in 1915. She attended Vassar College, but returned to New York after two years to write poetry.

In 1931 she traveled to Alabama to attend the infamous "Scottsboro Boys" trial (nine young black teenage boys were accused of raping two white women on a train, convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury; a lynch mob attempted to hang them before the trial, they were denied adequate counsel and exculpatory evidence was not presented. It also turned out that the two "victims" admitted they had fabricated the rape stories, but the boys were convicted anyway). She said that the event opened her eyes to the deep-seated existence of racism in American society, not only to the extent that innocent men were sentenced to death solely because they were black, but that she and other "Yankees" were chased out of town by locals angry at what they saw as outside "interference" in local matters). She returned to New York City and attended Roosevelt Aviation School (where she wrote her first book, "The Theory of Flight").

She later traveled to Europe, and in 1937 was aboard a train in Spain when the Spanish Civil War broke out; she and other passengers were trapped on the train in a town in the Pyrenees while gun battles raged outside between rebels and government troops. She returned to the U. S. and traveled between New York and California, writing the book "U. S. 1". She has also written several volumes of poetry, a biography of Willard Gibbs and a book about the fall of Wake Island during World War II.